This is sort of a fun read for those who may be looking for
a bit of a darker read but aren’t really ready for something scary.The head mistress of a ladies’ finishing
school and her brother are poisoned and rather than report the crime to the
local police the seven students decide to hide it in an effort to avoid being
sent home and separated from each other.Disgraceful Mary Jane, Sly Kitty, and Stout Alice (each girl has a
moniker) haphazardly cobble together a cover up while Pocked Louise sets her
sights on finding the killer.The
Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place is an interesting read for anyone
who enjoys murder mysteries with female protagonists.

I was delighted to hear that author Alan Bradley had a new book. As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust: a Flavia de Luce Novel features twelve year old Flavia’s adventures in Canada in the 1950’s, where she has been sent to boarding school. It is a gloomy and mysterious place, and almost immediately, Flavia discovers a mummified body in the chimney of her room.

If you have not made Flavia’s acquaintance before, she is definitely worth discovering. She has been compared to a cross between Harriet the Spy and Sherlock Holmes, and that is an apt description. If you are new to the series, it’s probably best to begin with The Sweetness at the bottom of the Pie, which is the first of Flavia’s adventures.

Janet Evanovich latest book Top Secret Twenty One has Stephanie Plum at it again. Stephanine Plum is a bounty hunter but not what you would think of as a typical bounty hunter. She gets by on being cute and lots of luck. In Top Secret Twenty One she is looking for Jimmy Poletti who is out on bail and has missed his court date. While hunting him down she keeps finding his poker buddies, one after the other, dead. She is also helping Ranger who has an old Russian enemy trying to kill him. As usual, Stephanie bumbles about and defies death a few times. You know how some hotels have a parking garage attached and there is a walkway from the hotel to the garage, well Stephanie finds herself on top of this walkway with a bad guy forcing her to cross it. Mix in 10 Chihuahuas and you have yourself another Stephanie Plum humorous bounty hunt. I have been reading Janet Evanovich for years, this is my first time listening to one of her books on audio downloaded from KPL’s overdrive. I love audio books but since I have been reading about Stephanie, Lulu, Ranger etc I have these characters in my head. Hearing a voice for Lulu that was not what my head envisioned bothered me. I and others had similar issues when the movie One for the Money came out. It was a good movie but each of us had preconceived impressions of how these people looked and talked. I think this is the highest praise we can give an author, Janet Evanovich has written her books so well that we have made these fictional characters real in our heads. I love the Stephanie Plum series although I keep thinking my goodness how inept can you be.Come on down to KPL and check it out.

Invisibleby James Patterson. Emmy Dockery is a research assistant for the FBI and thinks she has discovered a serial killer who uses arson to cover his tracks. The problem for Emmy is that the killer is very good at making these house fires look accidental. Also unfortunately for Emmy one of the victims was her twin sister so everyone discounts her theory thinking she is just mourning her sister. She enlists the aid of her ex finance, who is also ex FBI to look into the fires. They eventually find evidence and the hunt is on. The story is eerie and you feel Emmy’s frustrations. The author also lets us hear from the killer. The killer narrates the Graham Chronicles where we hear what the killer is thinking and what happens to a victim. This lets us the reader be on both sides on story, we watch Emmy track and try and hunt the killer down, we also hear from the killer and we are shared insight into the killers thoughts and actions. I downloaded this book from KPL as an mp3 and listened to the story. When the killer was talking, it sounded very pompously and full of self-importance. I took an instant dislike to the killer, but to be fair I wasn’t all that crazy about Emmy. Emmy was not a team player, she ignored Book’s commands and just did whatever she wanted even if that meant she might have endangered fellow agents. I was glad when Bookman finally got fed up with her and denounced her. That was almost more satisfying than them catching the killer. Come on down to KPL and check it out.

Scandanavian crime noir seems to be recognized as its own genre, and this new title by Camilla Lackberg certainly falls into that category. This is the seventh in the series that began with TheIce Princess, and features police detective Patrick Hedberg and true crime writer Erica Falck, now married and expecting their first child. Erica finds a Nazi war medal and diaries among her deceased mother’s possessions, and goes to visit one of her mother’s old friends, a historian and expert on World War 2, for more information. The man is brutally murdered soon after Erica’s visit.

Woven into the crime novel are scenes of everyday life in the small Swedish town of Fjallbacka, and characters that are interesting in their own right. Some reviews found this bothersome, but I didn’t. Even police detectives and true crime authors have real lives, running parallel to their professional ones.

If you haven’t yet discovered author Lackberg, it’s probably best to begin with her first book , The Ice Princess, although this novel can certainly stand on its own. Full of well placed clues and historical fact from the 1940’s, this kept me guessing until the end.

I watched the television show “Castle”. In the television show Richard Castle is a writer who gets to ride along with Detective Kate Becket and her team. In the television show (and I emphasize this) Richard Castle (played by Nathan Fillion) writes a book about Detective Kate Becket and calls her Nikki Heat. Someone thought hey lets write a real book about Nikki Heat and pretend it is written by Richard Castle just like in the television series. There are now 6 books in the Nikki Heat Series written by Richard Castle. Nobody knows who really writes these books. The book jacket shows a picture of Nathan Fillion but they say his name is Richard Castle. Nathan Fillion has even signed some books using his television name Richard Castle. The books have the same characters as in the show but they change the names. Richard Castle is called Jameson Rook, Kate Becket is of course Nikki Heat, Detective Ryan is Raley and Detective Esposito is Ochoa. I like that they renamed Castle as Rook. In Chess in a move called Castling, the Rook can change positions with the King. There after you call that piece a Castle. I like that they choose to use that play on words. When reading the books it is like watching the show but can get confusing. I was reading one of the books and watching the show at the same time, not exactly the same same time, and was getting a wee bit confused. In the show her mother was killed in an alley, but in the book she is killed in their kitchen. On the show during think tank sessions they toss around a little ball the size of a tennis ball, in the book they toss a basketball, I like the show version better. I downloaded from KPL and listened to these books on my mp3 player, KPL also has the print versions and digital. So whether you prefer print, digital or audio KPL has it all. Check it out at KPL.

Book

Nikki Heat Series by Richard Castle

I’ll admit flat out that I’m a huge fan of author Kate Atkinson. In her fourth novel featuring semiretired detective Jackson Brodie, “Started Early, Took my Dog”, the author delves into the subject of missing children. Jackson is searching for the biological parents of an Australian woman; it seems straightforward at first, but soon he has more questions than answers. He is also dealing with his teenage daughter by his first wife, his former lover and their son, and a dog that he impulsively rescues from an abusive owner. Concurrently, recently retired detective Tracy Waterhouse, lonely and somewhat jaded after seeing the darker side of life for decades, sees a young girl being dragged along by a prostitute, and something snaps- Tracy offers the woman cash for the kid, and suddenly she is a parent of a child in a fairy costume. Bad people are soon pursuing them, but they don’t seem to want the child back. All roads lead to Jackson; it emerges that he and Tracy are working towards the same end in solving their separate mysteries.

Kate Atkinson takes these potentially dark events and injects them with her sharp observations and wit. Previous novels in the Jackson Brodie series are equally great reading, and her best selling novel, “Life After Life” has won several awards, including the COSTA award in 2013.

Book

Started Early, Took my Dog

The hazmat killer’s recent victim is found on a carousel and Zach and Kylie of the elite NYPD Red force must find him before the mayors re-election vote. The hazmat killer is killing people that the legal system was unable to bring to justice. They torture the bad guy and video tape the confession, kill him and then leave the body in a very public place. The video is then released to the internet. Kylie and Zach have a hard time getting people to help as most are routing for the vigilante. NYPD RED 2 is James Patterson and Marshall Karp’s second book in this series. While you can read this book without having first read NYPD RED, I recommend reading them in order. Kylie and Zach have a romantic history and it’s just better if you read about it in the first book as they talk about it a lot (way more than I wanted) in the second book.You can find both books at KPL, as well as thousand of others both in hard print and digital.

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NYPD RED 2

9780316211239

Reviews for “Ripper: a novel” by Isabel Allende intrigued me, since this is a total departure from all of her previous work. I’m a fan of Allende and have read other novels by her, which fall more into the magical realism and historical fiction categories.

But this is a mystery, and much more besides, and it’s definitely hard to put down. The main characters are both strong and striking. Amanda, a brilliant high school senior, is something of a misfit who plays an online game called “Ripper” (as in Jack) with several other like- minded teenagers around the world, as well as her grandfather. Amanda’s parents are divorced but still very much in her life. Her mother, Indiana, is a good hearted healer who’s involved with two very different men- one a Navy SEAL with a past, and the other an independently wealthy man about town. Amanda’s dad is San Francisco’s deputy chief of homicide. When Amanda and her cyber friends start investigating a series of murders they believe are related (but no one else thinks so) things really heat up. Richly drawn and engaging characters add a lot to this fast paced thriller.

I hope that author Allende gives us more like this one!

Book

Ripper: a novel

Clive Cussler and Jack Du Brul have written another book, Mirage, filled with the adventures of the crew from the ship the Oregon. This time it’s all about invisible ships and magnetic blue beams. A Navy ship sailing out of Philadelphia disappears and somehow an inventor named Nikola Tesla is involved. Give it a read at KPL.